Developing a social media strategy
Web sites are rubbish. Social media rules. The conversation is where it’s at. Welcome to 2010. Whether you’re a freelancer or working for a large multi-national, if you’re working anywhere in the online space you should be considering the social aspect of everything you do. With that in mind, I thought I’d gather together the notes I’ve been making on creating a social media strategy. This is a work in progress, feel free to contribute via the comments.
What are you trying to accomplish?
As a small business, or freelancer, social media can be great for generating leads and promoting yourself. Larger organisations may be seeking greater brand awareness, brand engagement, customer service or crowd-sourcing ideas and effort. Arguably social media was more successful for smaller organisations in 2009, but larger companies are slowly realising that by letting go of a little bit of control they can reap the benefits.
Companies such as BT (who scanned Twitter for customer complaints and fixed their problems PDQ, without disrupting their conventional support and service mechanisms – an important consideration) and Max Factor (who supplement their online offering with a fantastic Facebook page) are good examples. Ultimately, understanding what the business is trying to achieve with a social media presence should be the first step in developing a social media strategy.
Why social media?
Is your audience there? Do you want to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects? Tap into online word-of-mouth channels? Demonstrate that you’re down with the kids? You have a niche audience that’s otherwise difficult to reach? The best way to avoid recklessly jumping on the bandwagon is to examine why the wagon is the best way to get where you’re going before you hop on. Ask yourself: is spending money on social media going to provide better ROI than other forms of advertising you could be spending money on? And, does it detract negatively from other activities?
What kind of social media will help you best achieve your goals?
Do you need to utilise social networking sites, blogs, real-time updates (e.g., Twitter), social news sites, media-sharing sites, review/directory sites, virtual worlds, or display ads on social media sites? In some respects, talking about a social media presence is like talking about having an advertising presence: you must specify what you’re doing and where you’re going to place it. Examine the characteristics of the type of social media you want to have a presence on and how those characteristics fit what you’re trying to accomplish to help choose the ones that will work best for you.
Let go of your brand?
Self appointed social media gurus talk about letting go of your brand. I say, “phooey”. It’s not about letting go of your brand, it’s about understanding that while you may have control within your organisation, outside you have little to none. People are individuals, with their own opinions, and they say what they like. You should prepare your strategy appropriately, and your company needs to understand that too. Focus on the conversation and relationship, not on brand logos and corporate speak. Negative commentary doesn’t always need to addressed, but making the community aware that a) you’re listening, and b) going to do what you realistically can to make a difference, is being a responsible business. That may sound simple, but in reality so many organisations get this wrong.
What will you do to encourage participation?
There’s nothing more embarrassing than going to a corporate YouTube channel and seeing that the viral video you’ve spent tons of money making has just 127 views. Ditto for going to a company’s Twitter feed and seeing that it has all of 11 followers. What are you planning to do to drive people to your social media presence? And do you have the money to do it? A content strategy is highly recommended, what content will be delivered when, and by who.
Who will maintain your social media presence?
Participating in social media takes a lot of work. You must have something to say and you must have someone (or a team of people) to say it on a regular basis. And saying it right! It won’t happen unless it becomes part of someone’s job, or recruit specifically for that role.
Resources?
Do you have the resources to keep up with the plan, or will it be a short campaign? Similarly, unless you specify that what you’re doing has a limited duration (such as a Twitter feed based on a particular conference), people will expect you to keep it up. Have you budgeted the resources to continue your social media presence beyond the fiscal year? Personally I compare short term campaigns directly to microsites, and avoid them like the plague. They’re resource hungry and generally dilute your social media strategy.
Integration with other initiatives?
How does engaging users via social media integrate into your overall marketing/communications strategy? None of this stuff exists in a vacuum. It has to be part of a larger marketing/communications strategy. How does social media fit into what you’re trying to do in all your other channels, and how will you use those channels to support each other?
How do you measure success?
What constitutes failure? Are you measuring views, followers, comments, or subscribers? What’s the threshold for your success metrics that takes them into success territory? What happens if you don’t get there? Measuring your social media success can prove challenging, but it’s not impossible. The challenge for larger organisations can be conveying success back to the business in a understandable way. Measuring presence, and the associated statistics, works well. The 10 Really Tangible Ways To Measure Social Media Success post is a great read.
Measure, and adjust. Constantly.
Social media is a relatively new form of communication, and I’m willing to bet until you successfully engage with your clients and customers in this way, you don’t actually know a great deal about them. For that reason, you should listen to the conversation, and adjust it appropriately. If I was a salesman describing a sales pitch, I’m sure I’d be saying something similar – except here you’re not trying to sell, you’re trying to have a reasonable conversation.
What will you do less of if you’re spending resources on social media?
Chances are you have a limited budget. If you spend more money on social media and other non-traditional forms of marketing, you have to spend less on something else. How will your overall goals be impacted by taking money away from other forms of advertising/marketing and moving it into social media?
Focus on your objectives, not on the tools.
There are plenty of tools for Facebook, Twitter, etc – and while they certainly help, they’re not essential to a successful strategy. In my experience, it helps to see beyond the tools you use, and to instead focus on the interaction between yourself and the other person.
How does your audience use social media?
Using the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder, understand how your target audience (as defined by gender, age, and geography) uses social media. If your audience skews older, you may not want to engage in a lot of “make a video” contests, since that segment indexes low on the “Creator” scale.
How will you police your own team/organisation?
Here’s a fantastic review of 113+ organisations social media policies, definitely have a look through them. I think it’s a crying shame when an organisation won’t let their staff get involved, but understand the reasons why. Having a good, enforceable social media policy in place should help. The BBC is an excellent example of how to let people get involved, without muzzling them (read their policy in the review link).
Do not abuse your position
Do not think you can game the social media system. Joe Public may well be an idiot, but put Joe and his pals in a group and they become very dangerous. Famously, Habitat tried the game the system by appending trending hashtags to their Twitter posts, in the hope that their messages like “join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” would reach a larger audience. Well, it did, and Habitat felt the full force of an angry mob working against them. They quickly deleted those messages and made a public apology.
Realtime is NOT fast enough
Posting and responding in realtime isn’t enough these days, companies must anticipate their customers needs. Displaying this anticipation, particularly the planning, and involving customers in this process creates a more realistic relationship dynamic between customer and business.
Next steps
1. Produce an overall strategy document
2. Create a team and organisation interaction guidelines document
3. Develop a content plan
Further reading
35+ examples of corporate social media in action
A-Z list of companies using social media marketing
10 Really Tangible Ways To Measure Social Media Success
